The present invention relates generally to a charged particle spectrometer. More particularly the invention relates to a spectrometer having a lens system configured to extract from a sample charged particle components having well controlled energy values and also to provide precise spatial manipulation and time of flight for the various charged particle beams, enabling highly sensitive detection of the charged particle components. Significant improvements in performing energy and angular refocusing spectroscopy are accomplished by using a two dimensional structure for generating predetermined electromagnetic field boundary conditions. The spectrometer is also operable in a number of modes including multiplexed SIMS and neutral atomic component ionization with time of flight analysis.
Significant advances have been made in the quantitative analysis of atomic components in a sample. For example, resonance ion spectrometers have demonstrated considerable sensitivity for the detection of atoms of a predetermined component. (See, for example, U.S. Pat. No. 4,442,354 and 3,987,302 (Hurst et al.) which are incorporated by reference herein). In practice, however, these previous resonance ion spectrometers still have significant limitations in terms of achieving reliable sensitivities in the part per trillion range because of severe difficulties encountered in discriminating low level signals to be measured from noise made up of competing, undesired and extraneous signals.